Big and surprising news this morning. Some considered him the crown prince of the Microsoft empire, slated to take over after Ballmer's eventual departure, but this morning, Steven Sinofsky announced his resignation from Microsoft. His role will be taken over by Julie-Larson Green. Persistent sources indicate that we're looking at a Forstall-esque situation; Sinofsky was, supposedly, not a good team player.

Its the other way around. Microsoft and others have and use technological ways to close the hardware and we, customers, have NO LEGAL way to claim our BOUGHT hardware back. The smash your property with a huge hammer the moment you try to use it for something they don't like you to use it for. This is not your property otherwise such behavior would be illegal.

The smash your property with a huge hammer the moment you try to use it for something they don't like you to use it for.

No they don't, that would be against the law. Doing their best to prevent you from doing what you want is one thing, deliberately destroying your property when you try do something they don't like is something completely different.
Companies do the first (which is perfectly within their rights), not the second.

[q]This is not your property otherwise such behavior would be illegal.[q/]

Microsoft can not forbid you from doing anything on a device that you own. Make it difficult, sure, but they have no legal way of stopping you from doing it.

Technically forbidden. Read that wording again. It is 100% accurate; Microsoft has made technical measures that cannot be bypassed and in the process have forbidden you from installing any other operating system.

Hey, I wonder if they've morphed the DMCA in such a way as to somehow make cracking the EFI trusted computing master keys to run whatever you want illegal yet? If not, it will probably eventually happen. Just give it time.

We've already reached the technical stage. The legal stage and the enforcement that comes with it will probably be coming next.